Join my friends and I as we spend 5 days together, exploring a variety of topics all related to mothering and homemaking!

Welcome back to 5 Days with Whole Wheat Flour! So far we’ve discussed the different types of wheat available, why you should choose whole wheat , and the benefits of grinding your own wheat. Today, it’s all about the point where the rubber meets the road: actually baking with whole wheat.

Now that you are fully armed with information about wheat, it’s time to learn how to use it. Baking with whole wheat is kind of tricky, not only because of the taste, but because of the texture as well. Not to mention that it behaves somewhat differently from white flour in baked goods, so you have to use it in a slightly different way.

Grind

I know I already said this yesterday, but if you missed out on that post, I will repeat it just for you: grind your own wheat berries for the freshest, best tasting flour ever! Whole wheat flour gets a bad rep in part because it is often already rancid when you buy it from the store. Part of that bitter taste comes from the tannins in the bran, but part of it is also the rancid quality. Freshly ground flour tastes nutty and sometimes sweet, not bitter.

Sift

As we discussed in the post “Why Whole Wheat?”, there are some concerns about the digestibility of whole wheat, particularly the bran. Some people resolve the issue by soaking or sprouting their flour, but I feel that sifting the flour is sufficient. Since (at least) the days of Rome, flour has traditionally been sifted to remove the larger pieces of bran left behind in the milling process. If you grind your wheat in the Vitamix, there’s not likely to be a lot of bran to sift out, but both store-bought and home-ground whole grain flours still benefit from a good sifting before baking. Sifting aerates the flour, which helps result in a lighter product in the end.

Weigh

The American system of measurement in baking - cups - is horridly inaccurate when it comes to measuring dry goods. One cup of flour can weigh 4 oz., or it can weigh 5.5 oz. Clearly, this makes a difference in whatever it is you’re baking, so it makes the most sense to weigh your flour when baking rather than using unreliable cup measurements. You can convert recipe measurements to weight, but it’s easier to start with a weight-based recipe in the first place. The easiest place to find such recipes is on British sites, like AllRecipes.co.uk. You can also find a huge list of measurement conversions at Convert-to.com.

If you don’t have a kitchen scale, I can highly recommend the one I use: The EatSmart Kitchen Scale. It’s small and lightweight, so it doesn’t take up a lot of space (a precious commodity in my kitchen!). Plus, it’s really easy to use and has proven to be very accurate.

Here’s a video of me sifting and weighing whole wheat flour to make bread. (I know, another vlog! Two days in a row! What is the world coming to?)

Orange Juice

King Arthur Flour - the expert on the subject - recommends replacing up to a 1/4 cup of the liquid called for in a recipe with orange juice. The orange juice is supposed to offset the bitter taste that whole wheat flour can sometimes project, but it doesn’t make the bread (or whatever you’re baking) taste like orange juice. We don’t normally have orange juice sitting around, but when oranges are in season, I do make use of this tip. Maybe this winter, I will freeze some extra orange juice so I can have it all year long! Some people recommend adding a pinch (just a little pinch!) of citric acid to the dough for presumably the same reason.

Moist & Flavorful

The stronger flavor of whole wheat flour works very well in recipes that have a complementary strong flavor. I personally think that whole wheat flour adds a lot to recipes that have a lot of spices, like gingerbreads and gingersnaps. Pumpkin breads and cakes also work well with whole wheat flour, in my opinion. The molasses and ginger in recipes like this really go together well with the hearty whole wheat flavor. Carrot cake is another one that I believe is a good candidate for whole wheat flour. Also, these recipes generally have more moisture to them, another reason whole wheat flour works well in them. Whole wheat flour loves moisture! So if you’re just starting to bake with whole wheat, I suggest you start with a recipe like one of these.

Replacing White Flour

When starting with a white-flour-based recipe, you can replace up to 1/3 of the white flour with whole wheat flour and not have to make any adjustments.

More Liquid

Keep in mind that whole wheat flour absorbs more liquid than white flour, so if you’re adapting a white-flour-based recipe, you’ll want to add more liquid. Add just a tablespoon at a time until you get the consistency you desire.

Consider a Different Flour

If your only exposure to whole wheat flour is the kind you buy at the grocery store, consider trying a different type of flour. In particular, I would recommend either white whole wheat flour or whole wheat pastry flour (the latter is not particularly good for bread, though, if that’s what you want to bake). Whole wheat pastry flour can be difficult to find, but white whole wheat flour is readily available at most grocery stores. Both of these flours will have a lighter taste and texture than the whole wheat flour you are more accustomed to.

Baking Bread with Whole Wheat Flour

Everybody loves a slice of fresh homemade bread, but making a 100% whole wheat loaf of bread that rises beautifully and tastes hearty but delicious can be a seemingly impossible task. I admit I’m not there yet, but I’ve learned a few things along the way that have helped me in my journey to bake a better loaf of bread.

Vital Gluten

Healthy Bread in 5 Minutes a Day, my own personal favorite guide to bread baking, recommends adding 1/4 cup of vital gluten to a 4-lb batch of dough (7-8 cups flour) to aid in the rise and elasticity of the dough. Gluten is the element of wheat flour that helps create the rise and elasticity of the dough, so that the final product is light but not crumbly. This is why most bakers prefer to use a high protein type of wheat (like hard red spring wheat) to bake bread, because high protein is high gluten. Unfortunately, when using whole wheat, the bran cuts into the strands created by the gluten, reducing the elasticity and hindering the rise. Sifting helps with this, but so does adding gluten.

Personally, I haven’t followed this advice because it’s just one more thing to put on my grocery list. My grocery budget is pretty tight, and doesn’t really have room for extra stuff. I also admit to being more than a little fearful of ingesting too much gluten, considering the rise of wheat allergies, sensitivities, and celiac disease. I am not 100% convinced that it is in fact the healthiest way to make bread. I am also not 100% against using it, should I ever decide to spend money on it. You will have to make that call for yourself. If you want to check it out, Amazon.com carries Hodgson Mill’s Vital Gluten.

Ginger

I like to add a few dashes of powdered ginger to my bread dough, because it is also a conditioner. It makes the yeast happy, which helps give the dough a happy rise.

Eggs, Sugar, Milk & Butter

These ingredients are all considered “dough conditioners” and will help produce a lighter loaf of bread when baking with whole wheat flour. Most sandwich bread recipes contain one or more of these ingredients because they will all help create a more delicious and higher-rising loaf of bread, the kind most of us are familiar with when it comes to sandwiches.

What are your favorite tips for baking with whole wheat flour?

The Entire Series

Day 1: What’s With All The Different Kinds of Wheat?

Day 2: Why Whole Wheat?

Day 3: Getting the Most Out of Your Wheat (Grind it Fresh)

Day 4: How to Bake with Whole Wheat Flour

Day 5: Tried and Tested Whole Wheat Recipes

Sharing at Works for Me Wednesday, This Chick Cooks

Join my friends and I as we spend 5 days together, exploring a variety of topics all related to mothering and homemaking!

Welcome back to 5 Days with Whole Wheat Flour! So far we’ve discussed the different types of wheat available, and why you should choose whole wheat (for the most part) over white flour. Today, we’re going to discuss the benefits of grinding your own wheat.

Say what? Yes, grinding your own wheat. No, not by hand. (Heavens, that would take forever!) Not even with a stone.

These days, you can purchase appliances that will speedily grind your wheat (and any other grain or seed) for you so that you can have the freshest possible flour in a minute or less.

Why? Why would you want to invest in such a tool? I know that I don’t part with my (husband’s) hard-earned money easily, and I suspect you don’t either. Allow me to convince you of the necessity of such a tool, and encourage you to save up for one if you don’t have ready money for it.

The reason why whole wheat should be freshly ground if at all possible is the same reason why we avoid certain oils: rancidity. Polyunsaturated fats easily turn rancid simply by exposure to heat, light, or air, making them very unstable. Oils made from these fats are full of free radicals, which become the source of a large number of diseases in the body.

The oil in wheat comes from the germ. Here’s the picture from yesterday so you can see what it looks like:

Storebought whole wheat flour might not contain all the oils and the germ in its entirety, but even so, it does go rancid much more quickly than white flour. This is a good thing. Living food will go bad much more quickly than dead or dying food. The trick is to consume it before it turns rancid so that you can get the benefit of all its nutrients without the risk of free radicals.

In the case of certain oils (most vegetable oils), this is nigh unto impossible, which is why many experts recommend avoiding such oils. (The Good Fat Cookbook by Fran McCullough explains this in great detail.) But thankfully, with whole wheat, there is a way to easily acquire fresh whole wheat flour without worrying about rancidity and free radicals.

The answer is to grind it yourself. When you grind your own whole wheat, you can be sure it is as fresh as possible. The bran (the outer covering of the wheatberry) protects the inside contents of the grain so that it can stay fresh for years. It’s only when the bran is crushed (or milled) that the germ is exposed to light and air and begins to rancidize.

If you’re still not convinced, consider the “rat study” mentioned by Katie of Kitchen Stewardship (who, as I mentioned yesterday, has extensively studied this topic of wheat, and has a lot of great information on her blog) in her post about the nutrition of freshly ground wheat. In the study, rats were fed a variety of types of wheat; some freshly ground, some 15-day old ground flour, and some store-bought white flour. Within 4 generations, the rats fed the old flour and the white flour had become completely infertile. Four generations of rats is the equivalent of 100 human years… Americans have been eating white flour for about 130 years, and what has become a widespread problem? Infertility. I think it is no coincidence!

So whether you sprout it or soak it or not, clearly the healthiest wheat is the freshest wheat. Many experts suggest that freshly ground whole wheat can be refrigerated or frozen and used within 2-4 months. I say better safe than sorry. Grinding wheat in the appropriate equipment takes less than a minute, so it’s easy enough to grind your wheat right before you need to use it. If you have extras, you can store it in the freezer to use a tablespoon at a time as a thickener or sourdough feeder. But generally speaking, it’s best to use the flour you grind right away.

I have no experience with grain mills, so I will direct you Kelli at Lady of the Barn, who is also participating in the 5 Day series, and presented the results of her extensive research on grain mills earlier this week. She will direct you to the best grain mills for your purpose.

What I do have experience with is my Vitamix! With a Vitamix dry blade, you can grind wheat berries in a minute! It’s so easy to use, and I love that it’s a multi-purpose appliance. Aside from my yogurt machine, my rule for the kitchen is that all of my appliances must be multi-taskers, and the Vitamix certainly is that. I use it at least once a day, and for all kinds of things: smoothies, coconut milk, rice milk, brown rice flour, milk shakes, ice cream, etc. etc. But I especially love to use it for grinding fresh flour.

And whaddyaknow, I actually made you a video about it! This is my first ever vlog, can you believe it? I’ve been blogging for how long, and this is my first vlog? Crazy! And for you non-video-watchers (because I confess, I am one), I’ve written out my flour grinding method below the video. Enjoy!

My Flour-Grinding Vitamix Method

1. Store the wheat berries in the freezer. Grinding in the Vitamix generates a lot of heat, which can damage some of the vitamins, and it also means you have to give the flour some time to cool down before using it. If you freeze your berries first, that will help with both issues. I can use flour ground from frozen berries right away.
2. Only grind grains in the Dry Blade, which must be bought separately.
3. Grind one cup at a time. The Vitamix manual says you can grind up to two cups at a time, but I find that it grinds better when I only do one cup at a time.
4. Turn the variable speed to “ten”, then the switch to High. Grind for one minute (set a timer if you need to).
5. Sift the flour through a mesh strainer before using.

That’s all there is to it! To clean it, you can fill the container half way with water and a drop of dish soap, and blend it on high for about 30 seconds, then rinse. When there’s just dry dust from grains, Isimply give it a good rinse and let it dry.

Purchasing a Vitamix with a dry blade costs about $600, plus shipping. Gulp. I know! El Cheapo here can’t even think about that cost without shuddering! But you have a few options:

• Consider a reconditioned machine. They cost about a $100 less, and come with a 5-year warranty.
• Purchase it at Costco. Periodically Costco will have a Vitamix show where a vendor will come to demonstrate the product, and it’s usually cheaper then.
• Save up! That’s what I did. I saved my spare pennies until I could afford one.
• Follow Granola Mom 4 God’s example and put it on your wish list. Ask everyone to contribute what they would spend on your birthday or Christmas present to your Vitamix fund instead.

And if you think a Vitamix is still not worth it, I strongly urge you to think again. I normally don’t pay anymore for anything than I have to, and I’m famous for buying the cheapest thing possible. But can I tell you how many blenders and food processors I burned through before I finally threw up my hands in defeat and declared I wouldn’t purchase another one until I purchased a Vitamix!? I wasted probably several hundred dollars anyway on machine that just didn’t last. The Vitamix (a new one) comes with a 7-year warranty and usually lasts much, much longer than that.

Well. I seriously did not intend for this post to be such a Vitamix commercial, but I just got excited and a little carried away! Ahem. At any rate, I can assure you, Vitamix did not sponsor me in any way for this post, but I am a Vitamix affiliate. So if you click on my Vitamix links and make a purchase (yay, you!), then I will earn a small commission. The good news for you is that you also earn $25 in free shipping just for clicking my link, a win-win in my opinion! Or you can take my advice and wait until Vitamix comes to Costco for a better price. I totally understand, because that’s exactly what I did. At any rate, I really think you need to go get yourself a Vitamix.

And grind some grain, baby!

The Entire Series

Day 1: What’s With All The Different Kinds of Wheat?

Day 2: Why Whole Wheat?

Day 3: Getting the Most Out of Your Wheat (Grind it Fresh)

Day 4: How to Bake with Whole Wheat Flour

Day 5: Tried and Tested Whole Wheat Recipes

Sharing at Frugal Days, Sustainable Ways, and Works for Me Wednesday